It is almost impossible to define poverty as a term precisely. It can be said that the poverty is the lack of basic financial and material living conditions. An answer to a question what basic material living conditions are differs from country to country, even in different regions, cities and villages within a country.
The poverty occurs in various forms and it is measured by various instruments. The most significant division of poverty is the one that includes objective and subjective poverty. There are absolute poverty, absolute poverty threshold and relative poverty threshold as the most significant poverty indicators.
Apart from financial and material, poverty also represents a social problem whereas impoverished are often deprived of various kinds of events, they become cast off from the society and the object of discrimination and similar.
The povverty is a global problem, none of the countries aren't exempted from it; The Republic of Croatia is not an exception, too. Since it's independence, the Republic of Croatia has been struggling with the poverty problem which is still actual.
It is not an easy task to reduce the poverty. Numerous documents whose purpose is poverty reduction, have been adopted but if we don't take some concrete actions immediately, there will be catastrophic consequences.